Made in IBM Labs: New IBM Software Accelerates Decision Making in the Era of Big Data

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ARMONK, N.Y.
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03 Apr 2012:
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new software to provide clients with a sophisticated way to tame the data deluge and speed up business processes, making it easier for decision makers to gain insights from data. Based on innovations from IBM labs, the new software continuously accesses, compresses, and analyzes data, freeing up IT staff to work on higher value tasks such as big data and business analytics.

Over the past four years, more than 100 clients, 200 business partners, and hundreds of experts from IBM Research and Software Development Labs around the world collaborated to develop the new software.

In the era of big data, organizations are struggling to gain insights from information assets to transform business operations and be competitive in their industries. The challenge is compounded by new high performance applications that require instant access to new types and massive amounts of data from social networks, sensors, and mobile devices, along with data growing exponentially inside business applications.

New Software Helps Clients Find Answers Up to 10 Times Faster and Free Up Storage

During testing, clients performed data warehouse queries up to 10 times faster to speed up decision making, freed up storage space up to 90 percent to dramatically reduce storage needs, and easily migrated data from expensive Oracle Database to IBM DB2 software with 98 percent code compatibility that didn't require changing the data or retraining staff. Using the new software, clients can:

Access big data for deeper insights –- Big data integration and real-time data analysis provides faster insights from unstructured data, such as social networking information or text from mobile devices. Insights from Hadoop-based systems are now easily integrated with real-time analysis of structured data in the warehouse to enable better and faster business decisions.

Speed up business processes and lower data management costs -- Adaptive Compression and Multi-Temperature Data Management instantly compresses data to make it easier for business applications to use it and place into the most effective storage. Compression speeds up the flow and better manages big data for use by analytics applications. The new software automatically assesses how frequently data is needed and moves it to cost effective storage based on how "hot" or "cold" it is.

Look into the past and future to improve decision making -- Time Travel Query enables easier access to data at any point in time. For example, an online travel agency can automatically detect inconsistencies in itineraries such as a hotel booked in Rome for eight days while a car is reserved in New York City for three of those days. Previously, database administrators and application developers had to write complex code to uncover this relationship.

“Today’s growing data volumes make it tougher for clients to access the right data when they need it to stay competitive," said Arvind Krishna, general manager, IBM Information Management. “IBM has advanced database and data warehouse technology to the point where data management can be automated and insights shared more broadly than ever before, freeing up decision makers and IT staff to focus on business growth.”

Coca-Cola Bottling Company Reinvests Cost Savings by Switching to DB2

The largest independent bottler of Coca Cola products in the U.S. has been using DB2 10 to drive increased performance and lower software and hardware costs.

“Coca Cola Bottling Company has saved more than a million dollars over the past four years in licensing, maintenance, and storage costs by migrating from Oracle to IBM database software,” said Tom DeJuneas, IT team manager. “We’ve reinvested these savings into other business projects, while keeping our operating expenses flat. As a result, we don’t have to pass rising costs on to consumers, which allow us to maintain our sales volumes and market share.”

The upgrade to DB2 10 further enhances performance and boosts business processes. Coca-Cola Bottling Company has seen the time to process queries decrease dramatically. This improves Supply Chain Management processes with increased average response of SAP workloads from 30 to 60 percent, which in turn helps bring products to market faster.

Clients Choose IBM Software for New Workloads

“Banking customers today require instant and anytime access to accounts either online or through mobile devices. IBM's new database software allows us to meet these demands and helps predict and address network bottlenecks so there is not an interruption in service,” said Lefentse Sennelo, DB2 database specialist, ABSA Bank, a member of the Barclays Group. “The high availability and disaster recovery features help ensure our customers get the best experience every time.”

“IBM's new database software allows Mindray to compress business data flowing through our SAP applications by nearly 77 percent, which means we spend less time and money on managing and storing our data,” said Eric Xu, DB2 database administrator, Mindray Medical International Limited. “This new feature is automatic and we don't have to take our data offline or require an administrator to spend time working on it, freeing up valuable resources.”

“As one of China’s top 15 manufacturers, Jianlong Steel is interested in controlling costs and improving performance as we process 6.5 million tons of steel each year,” said Feng Wang, database administrator, Jianlong Steel. “We tested the IBM software and found improved performance and cost savings from the new adaptive compression and workload manager features. We think the new database software will prove very valuable to our business.”

Credit-qualified clients can take advantage of 0 percent financing over 12 months for new IBM database and data warehouse software licenses and support charges. Competitive rates are also available for 24 and 36 month payment terms. Clients benefit by improving project payback, preserving upfront cash for other strategic investments and securing a fixed, predictable monthly payment.